Tom Daschle's Duty to be Morally Coherent

J. Bottum

Tom Daschle may no longer call himself a Catholic. The Senate minority leader and
the highest ranking Democrat in Washington has been sent a letter by his home
diocese of Sioux Falls, sources in South Dakota have told The Weekly Standard,
directing him to remove from his congressional biography and campaign documents
all references to his standing as a member of the Catholic Church.

This isn't exactly excommunication--which is unnecessary, in any case, since Daschle made himself ineligible for communion almost 20 years ago with his divorce and remarriage to a Washington lobbyist. The directive from Sioux Falls' Bishop Robert Carlson is rather something less than excommunication--and, at the same time, something more: a declaration that Tom Daschle's religious identification constitutes, in technical Catholic vocabulary, a grave public scandal. He was brought up as a Catholic, and he may still be in some sort of genuine mental and spiritual relation to the Church. Who besides his confessor could say? But Daschle's consistent political opposition to Catholic teachings on moral issues--abortion, in particular--has made him such a problem for ordinary churchgoers that the Church must deny him the use of the word "Catholic."